Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

So, yes. It is time to review Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021). And honestly? I got nothing. I have very little to say about of the film which isn’t painfully obvious from just hearing about the trivia surrounding it. The film is four hours long (it’s too long). The film had additional reshoots three-plus years after release (several scenes are tacked on and don’t work). The studio allowed the filmmaker to do whatever he originally wanted with the material (it is, at times, pointedly personal, and collectively, a thorough mess). So, I’m going to have my lovely wife, Lora (@BringToABoyle) pinch-hit, because, friends... She had opinions about this one. Enjoy.

Title: Zack Snyder’s Justice League (2021)

Director: Zack Snyder

Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Gal Gadot, Ciarán Hinds

Have I Seen it Before: Technically no - seeing as how this week was the first time anyone could stream this version of the film. However, as we will come to learn in the course of this entry, I certainly feel like I’ve seen this before.

Did I Like It: Ultimately, there wasn’t much for me to like. At four hours long, there’s a TON of content here, but it never feels cohesive. It’s a story told in several parts, which might have worked better as a TV series, but does nothing in service to the overall plot other than provide way too much material to sift through. There are at least four different movies here: a coming together of great superheroes to save the planet movie, a fairly decent Cyborg (Ray Fisher) solo flick, a high fantasy epic where disparate groups of people come together to destroy the object the Big Bad seeks to find, and a heartfelt movie about family, loss, and moving on.

As the coming together of heroes to save the planet, Justice League really falters for me. There’s nothing here I haven’t already seen across several Marvel movies. And while the Big Bad of the MCU showed us a lot about why he was out to blink a bunch of people out of existence, Darkseid (Ray Porter) offers us no such thing. Any time he or Steppenwolf or Darkseid’s acolyte person (the internet says he is DeSaad (Peter Guinness), but I swear the movie never names him), were on screen together they only spoke in exposition. Get the mother boxes together...for reasons. An equation for anti-life (huh??) exists and it turns out it’s been on Earth for a long time...for reasons. I have no idea why any of these things is happening, nor do I really care to find out. 

The one thing this version improves over the theatrical version is in it’s service to Cyborg’s story. In fact, this could have a been a very solid solo film for him. It’s a thoughtful and interesting story of a father facing a tragedy and using his scientific knowledge to save his son’s life after losing his wife. In doing so, he turns his son into a cyborg with massive technological potential, but the son has to come to terms with what was forced upon him and how he will reconstruct his life. Not only is this a story about a dynamic and intellectual Black family, it’s also a story of disability and acceptance. I’ve seen many people on #DisabilityTwitter applaud Cyborg’s line in the film “I’m NOT broken!” as he finally starts to reconcile who he is and what his father gave him. 

Ultimately, yes, I’ve seen this film before. A. Lot. There’s a really long scene, which is basically just the ancient battle in The Lord of the Rings where the armies of the Elves, Dwarves, and Men (I mean, Amazons, Atlantians, and Men) all come together or destroy Sauron (Darkseid) and take away his ring of power (mother boxes, also there’s a ring, but not the one you’re thinking of) and formulate a plan to keep the source of power away from the evil until the evil possibly one day returns. I hope Peter Jackson got some royalties for this film. Also, Steven Spielberg called and would like his Jurassic Park (1993) rippling glass of water back. Not to knock the Cyborg story, but James Cameron deserves a nice fruit basket.

There’s also a family film in here somewhere about moving on from loss. I know Zack Snyder suffered a profound loss in his own family while working on the original film. Amy Adams is phenomenal in her portrayal of grief. Diane Lane is also an amazing actor. I would watch the hell out of their film about moving on from Clark’s death. Instead of really leaning into this and bringing in a more powerful emotional side to the film, instead we get...Martian Manhunter? Ugh. Don’t get me wrong. I love him in Supergirl. But why is he even here?

To paraphrase from a different DC movie: Why so...many endings? Seriously. More endings than The Return of the King (2003). And some of these endings aren’t even endings to things that happen in this film. Jared Leto reprises his role at the Joker in one such ending scene - which takes place in...an alternate timeline? The future? There’s no explanation for it, other than it is yet another Dream Of The Future(tm) for Batman (Affleck). Leto feels like he’s trying to channel too much of Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix’s version of the character, and seems less interested in making it his own. Plus, he feels like the Joker for a different Batman film. Maybe something in the Schumacher oeuvre?

Some final random thoughts: Batman looks really silly fighting aliens. It just doesn’t fit for his character’s skill set. Alfred, in any iteration honestly, is great. Jeremy Irons is particularly fun here and brightens every scene he’s in. Finally, I dislike this version of The Flash. Ezra Miller is fine, and is doing his best with what he has here. But it doesn’t help that every scene in the film with The Flash being flashy is...SOOOO sloooow. Putting The Flash in all slow-mo just isn’t a choice I would have made. It also probably added fifteen minutes to a four-hour (!) runtime. Plus there are some implications that The Flash is going back and resetting time or something? It’s another thing in a long line of things in this film that is just never explained.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Director: Zack Snyder

Cast: Ben Affleck, Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Jesse Eisenberg

Have I Seen it Before: :gritting through my teeth: Yes.

Did I Like It: Let’s get right to it, shall we?

This is... Yes, I’m going to say it, a more wrong-headed film than Batman & Robin (1997). More stunted than Superman IV: The Quest For Peace (1987). To slightly break up the pattern I’m building, it is even more irritating than Rob Zombie’s Halloween (2007), which would make it the single most irritating film ever produced.

Now that I’ve cleared all of the Zack Snyder fans off the site*, let’s really talk about how the film goes wrong.

Martha. We’ve all talked about it. Or, more appropriately, we’ve talked at the issue. From before this film shot a single frame, the conceit has a flaw that was going to take some heavy lifting to surpass. The film was never going to be the battle royale between the Dark Knight (Affleck) and the Man of Steel (Cavill). They would initially disagree, and maybe scuffle just a tad, before realizing that they need to join forces in order to vanquish a larger, common foe.

This movie gets to that point, but hinges their eventual alliance on the fact that their mothers happen to have the same name. This would have been annoying storytelling in its own right, but the fact that the film almost, very nearly credibly sells Batman’s need to destroy Superman, all to have it not mean anything. Suddenly. Irrevocably. So much so that it fuels Batman’s megalomania well into the next movie.

Had Superman had a moment of humanistic purity that stopped their fight, or if Batman’s intellect had uncovered the realization that Lex Luthor (Eisenberg, more on him in a bit) had been playing them for fools the whole time, the third act really could come together.

This movie could never possibly recover from that moment.

Oh, but wait, there’s more. Is there a poorer casting choice in recent memory than Jesse Eisenberg trying to take his Mark Zuckerberg schtick to its absurdist conclusion and make something like a Lex Luthor out of it? He lacks the gravitas for the character. Bruce Willis could have played this character. The task may have been beneath the skills of Bryan Cranston. Even Kevin Spacey equated himself well enough, if nauseatingly in retrospect. I had a debate with somebody shortly after the release as to whether or not the miscasting of Eisenberg or the Martha blunder would be the film’s lasting legacy.

Why can’t it be both?

And there are other flaws as well that are more banal and less load-bearing. At three hours for the “ultimate” edition, it utterly fails to warrant its runtime. There are plenty of perfectly fine films that filled two VHS tapes back in the day, but also plenty of great films that didn’t need to be that long. Making a film long doesn’t guarantee an epic scope, or a story we can sink our teeth into. It guarantees nothing. Editors, please proceed with caution.

Also, I do have one big beef with the film which bears mentioning, speaking of the Ultimate Edition. In the lead up to this home video release, there was a bubbling sense that this extension would include Barbara Gordon/Oracle, and she would be played by Jena Malone. This would have been great casting, and widened the DC movies in a pretty great way. It didn’t happen, though. Malone played... I dunno, some IT person at The Daily Planet. Is it the film’s fault that it didn’t give me Oracle? No. Is it DC Films continued fault that they won’t give us Oracle, even in Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of one Harley Quinn) (2020)? Absolutely.

And yet, it’s not all bad, which makes it somehow more frustrating. 

Affleck is actually good as Batman. I’m reasonably sure I didn’t need a cinematic reboot of the character only four years after The Dark Knight Rises (2012), but he brings a certain quality to the character that was missing from Bale, or Kilmer, certainly Clooney, and dare I say, even Keaton. His interplay with Alfred (Jeremy Irons) is pristine. His unflinching eagerness for danger in the film’s opening minutes is about as Batman as a film performance could get. The sequence where he rescues Martha is pretty great. Sure, he’s a little eager to kill people standing in his way, but even Keaton wasn’t above some murder, so who am I to judge? I could have done with several more movies with him in the role, if only in the hopes that he could finally shed the title of Best Batman To Never Be In A Good Batman Movie. 

And now there’s nothing left to do but endure Zack Snyder’s Justice League. Speaking of things which have no right to be as long as they are... Let’s get this over with, I suppose.

*I would remind those of faithful still remaining that I kind of liked Man of Steel (2013).

Man of Steel (2013)

Director: Zack Snyder

Cast: Henry Cavill, Amy Adams, Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe

Have I Seen it Before: Yep.

Did I Like It: Honestly, kind of? I know that’s strange to hear from me, when I’ve been so blissfully, aggressively down on the follow-up, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)*, but there is something to this film that I find imminently watchable. 

The casting is top notch all around. I don’t think Russell Crowe has ever been a better action hero than his spin on Jor-El, and makes him seem like more of a man than the distant God-like figure filled in by Marlon Brando in years past. For that matter, between unseen corpses in The Big Chill (1983) and certain Princes of Thieves, Kevin Costner has been miscast more than a few times, but Pa Kent is not one of those. Also, Richard Schiff is in it. That’s very nearly worth a Michael Keaton or two in my book.

It’s true strength is this: eschewing the slavish devotion to the Christopher Reeve/Richard Donner films that perhaps weighed down Superman Returns (2006), this film surprisingly tries to turn the story of the last son of Krypton coming to Earth to live among humanity into an actual alien invasion story.

It’s such a simple and refreshing take on the mythos that I’m tempted to give the film a pass on any flaws that can’t be avoided. Anyone who lives in the midwest will probably find stumbling on a tornado as a pretty unlikely set of circumstances, to say nothing for the fact that having Pa Kent eat it in the middle of cyclone falls far short of the pathos-filled slow heart attack which took out Glenn Ford. The third act is notoriously wall-to-wall disaster porn, and the choice to have Superman (Cavill) kill Zod (Michael Shannon) in something approaching cold bold feels antithetical to the purity of the character. That’s because it is. But at least here, it stems from the rest of the film as presented, and it isn’t exactly like it’s a lazy coincidence that resolves all of the tension in the movie.

For that, we’d have to wait for the sequel.

*Even five years later, that title is an absolute chore to type.

Mission: Impossible -- Fallout (2018)

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Cast: Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill*, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson

Have I Seen it Before: Certainly.

Did I Like It: I was a little down on Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015) as by that fifth entry in the series, the sameness that plagued the television series was starting to just bubble to the surface. The prospect of the series now settling into a regular cast and a regular director only increased the fear that said sameness would be the order of the day for the foreseeable future.

I’m happy to report that it appears McQuarrie may be just getting warmed up, but at the moment, he is content to make subtle changes to the tried and true format. Giving Hunt and company recurring heavy (Sean Harris) at first blush feels like more descending into monotony, but for this series it is a breath of fresh air. 

Up until this point, Hunt has been presented as an unassailable movie spy. Here, it’s sort of delightful, a measure more realistic, and includes an added dimension of suspense into the final set piece that it appears Hunt has no clue how to fly a helicopter, but must do so anyway. One might spend some spell of time after seeing the film wondering how Hunt could have been in the line of work that he was for as long as he had and not get more expert in the operation of various types of vehicles, but that time would be ill spent, and I don’t recommend it.

Even if the promise of these new elements reverts back to the mean while McQuarrie is at the helm, the hand at the wheel is steady enough that I will still enjoy entries in this series, even if they don’t continue to try and surprise.

*Will it ever be possible to look at Cavill’s mustache in this film and not revel in the reality that it is pointedly one thing that made Justice League (2017) a bizarre, unlovable Frankenstein’s Monster of a film? I think not.

Justice League (2017)

Director: Zack Snyder credited, Joss Whedon with the assist

Cast: Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Ciarán Hinds, Henry Cavill

Have I Seen it Before: The better question is whether I’m ever going to feel compelled to watch it again.

Did I Like It: It’s… not the worst. As long as we live in a world with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) or Batman & Robin (1997), we can live secure in that knowledge.

The text of this review appeared previously in a blog post entitled “Okay, Warner Bros. Time for us to have another one of those little chats.” published on 12/03/2017.

Hey, Warner Bros. It’s been a long time. No, I still don’t think the name “Martha” is a sufficient plot development around which to build an entire screenplay, but I don’t want to talk about that. We’re friends; we’ve been friends for a long time. Let’s talk about something else.

So Justice League is a thing. You went waaaaay simpler on the title. That’s good. 

You picked up Joss Whedon for some relief pitching. Tragic why it came to that point, but I think you hired the right guy to finish the job. 

Wonder Woman (the film) and Wonder Woman (the character) are legit, and you doubled down on that. Good; very good. 

Danny Elfman’s doing the score? Is he going to bring back his theme from Batman (1989)? He is? Well, you’ve got a hit on your hands if I’ve ever heard of one.

What’s that? Why wouldn’t you use the Flash you have set up on television? He’s even super dimension-hoppy… Fine, whatever. Flashpoint will sort this all out.

Who’s the villain? Steppenwolf? Like “Born to be Wild”/“Magic Carpet Ride” Steppenwolf? No, he’s a… with horns, you say…? Oh, a helmet. Like the dude at the beginning of Thor: Ragnarok? No, not like that… Why not use Darkseid? You’re wanting to tease that out. :sigh: That’s fine, we can’t blame you for aping a format that certainly has worked for the other guys. Actually, I can blame you for that, but we’ll get to that later.

Wait… What’s that about Henry Cavill’s mustache?

An actual frame from the movie.

The same frame, unaltered. Don’t look it up. Just trust me.

Oh, Warner Bros, you sweet, innocent, beautiful summer child. What have we learned?

All Newhart-esque riffs aside, Zack Snyder’s third film with Superman as a character* is out now, and is fine. While it certainly doesn’t have any of the bewilderingly bad choices that Martha v Martha: Dawn of Martha had**, it still isn’t nearly as thrilling as Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman, but plays it far safer than the interesting-in-concept, but uneven Man of Steel (2013). Is it a step in the right direction for the floundering DCEU? No. It actually moves the proceedings back to the gestalt of Mommy v Mommy: Mommy of Mommy; as it turns out, Wonder Woman was the step in the right direction. That right direction, as it turns out, would be to make a bunch (and not just one) really watchable movie, then try to bring those disparate elements into a huge crowd pleaser. If only there was somebody out there that had already done this. That would be marvelous.

And that’s where I come in with some thoughts about the future of the DCEU, especially in light of League’s anemic box office. The internet has already buzzed about the possibility, and several news items have indicated that Warner Bros. may be thinking in this direction, but it may be time to abandon the Marvel business model. DC might have had a chance at being the second person to the party, but too many missed opportunities, murky creative strategies, and well, let’s face it, Marthas mean that DC may never truly get it together. The massive superhero movie continuity may not be possible to replicate. Heck, any massive movie continuity is not likely to have the benefit of a Robert Downey Jr. opening salvo, and thus, falter. Just ask the poor, maligned Universal monsters, who—despite their proud tradition of creating the idea of a cinematic shared universe before 1950—have had to endure now two false starts in twice as many years at uniting their stable of characters.

So don’t try, DC. Be weird. Don’t worry about setting up the next movie. In fact, it might be better if you’re no 100% sure what the next movie will even be. That Scorcese-produced Joker movie? I’d rather you didn’t go back to that well, but as long as Jared Leto stays home, I’m in. Flashpoint could cleanse the palette, give Affleck a dignified*** exit, allow Gal Gadot to keep making Wonder Woman movies in perpetuity, and restore Henry Cavill’s upper lip to its once-humanoid glory…

But what do I really want you to do DC? What is the only Christmas wish this boy has on his list?

You know what I’m about to say.

Last year, I wrote <here on the blog> about how I would have preferred DC handle its shared universe. It didn’t involve Affleck, and it didn’t really involve Batman, per se. You didn’t take that course here, but if you are truly giving up the ghost on being Marvel-lite, can I ask for one movie to be included in your increasingly Elseworlds-esque slate…

Batman Beyond… with Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne. You can even bring back Danny Elfman to do the score.

Get that done, Warner Bros., and everything will be forgiven. Including any and all Marthas that may come up between now and then.

*Spoiler alert? Can something be a spoiler alert if the bit of info is built out of pure inevitability? These are the questions I ponder at night when sleep eludes me.

**Although it still did manage to include an irritating tag scene with profoundly miscast Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor.

***He wants a “cool” way out of the role, and presumably never have to talk about it again, but I think the “best Batman to never be in a good Batman movie” can be erased from existence via the Cosmic treadmill, right?